War Stories (13 page)

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #5

      
HMM-268 Forward Operating Base

      
Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait

      
Wednesday, 12 March 2003

      
1445 Hours Local

We're finally embedded in our assigned unit: Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM) 268. From now until the end of the war, we'll be living with and flying with the Red Dragons. Their twelve CH-46 helicopters are parked on the flight line about 150 meters from the squadron ready room—a frame tent with a plywood floor erected next to a steel maintenance building that serves as the headquarters for Marine Air Group (MAG) 39. I note that there are several large sandbagged bunkers within a few feet of the building.

My FOX News Channel colleagues received my assignment to this squadron with some amusement. Since I had served as an infantry officer for twenty-two years, everyone—myself included—assumed that the Pentagon public affairs officers who are running the embedding process would send me to a Marine ground combat unit. And since FOX News Channel's Greg Kelly is a Marine AV-8 Harrier pilot, we all expected that he would be posted to a Marine aviation component. So much for assumptions.

As it turns out, Rick Leventhal and Christian Galdabini are heading off in a FOX Humvee to cover the Marines' 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. Greg Kelly and Mal James have been assigned to cover the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, so they are taking the other FOX vehicle. Both the Kelly and Leventhal teams have what seems to be several tons of equipment. But since Griff Jenkins and I are covering—and therefore flying in—Marine helicopters, we must carry all of our equipment on our backs or manhandle it on and off the birds.

To accommodate the weight and space restrictions on the helicopters, Griff and I spent countless hours in Kuwait City reconfiguring our loads and repacking our gear until we were down to an absolute minimum. We finally managed to squeeze all our electronic equipment, satellite gear, cameras, miles of videotape, batteries, electrical leads, transmission cables, and computers into two rugged Pelican cases. We also have a small diesel generator for emergency electrical power. All of our personal equipment, clothing, chemical protective suits, shaving kits, canteens, extra boots, ponchos, gloves, dust goggles, flashlights, and assorted “comfort items,” like toilet paper and baby wipes, get jammed into our Osprey backpacks.

When we're “saddled up” with our body armor, gas masks, and backpacks, carrying the Pelican cases and generator, we look like a couple of pack mules, but we can quickly move all our equipment
on or off a CH-46 helicopter in just two trips up and down the ramp.

Lt. Col. Jerry Driscoll, the squadron commander, seems genuinely glad to see us. He introduces us to the pilots and aircrews and takes us around the Ali Al Salem Air Base so that we can get our bearings. One of the squadron pilots, 1st Lt. Ken Williamson, is assigned to serve as our liaison and run interference for us with the air group. He introduces himself as “the oldest flying first lieutenant in the Marine Corps,” and delivers us to our new home, the “field grade tent” in the squadron area, with the admonition, “You guys should have stayed with the lieutenants and captains. We live closer to the bunker.”

The officers and Marines of the squadron are all billeted in frame tents identical to those of the 7th Marines. But here, even though this entire canvas city was erected in January, when the squadron first arrived in Kuwait, the Seabees are just now in the process of installing modular showers and replacing the portable heads with “toilet trailers.” It's the first time in my Marine Corps experience that I've seen the “air wing” living rougher than the “grunts.”

Lt. Williamson points out the U.S. Army Patriot PAC-3 missile battery and an anti-aircraft missile battery providing protection from incoming Iraqi Scud missiles and any other threat from the air. Before leaving us in our new abode, he points to a telephone pole with a large loudspeaker on top. “That's what we call the ‘Great Giant Voice.' If you hear them announce a missile attack or a chemical alarm, grab your gas mask, flak jacket, and chemical suit and head for the nearest bunker and stay there until the ‘all clear' is sounded.” Griff immediately looks around for his gas mask and realizes he's left it in the ready room.

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #6

      
HMM-268 Forward Operating Base

      
Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait

      
Thursday, 13 March 2003

      
0900 Hours Local

“Dust storm!” Maj. John Graham, the squadron XO (executive officer), muttered late last night as he stumbled into our tent in the darkness, trying to find his folding cot. I rolled over and went back to sleep. Now it's three hours after sunrise but it's impossible to see more than a few feet outside our tent. Inside, the air is full of fine dust that settles on everything. Gusts of wind whip the sides and roof of our shelter with a racket that sounds as if it could rip the canvas apart. The 2x4 frame holding the tent up groans as though the beams might snap at any moment. Without the sun to warm the desert floor, it's actually cold, and I pull on a sweater beneath my field jacket.

Griff and I were supposed to fly with the squadron this morning out to one of the ranges so that the gunners could “zero” their weapons. But the training missions and all other nonessential flights have been canceled for the duration of the storm. Instead, we've been summoned to a briefing for all the correspondents assigned to MAG-39 squadrons.

First Lt. John Neiman is the air group's public affairs officer (PAO), and even though there are no official “censors” to review what we print or broadcast, the PAO has been ordered to give all of us the parameters concerning what we may report.

As in all past wars, someone “up the chain of command” has decided what the media can and cannot say, print, or show on the air. Those of us in the fourth estate who are accompanying the combat units being assembled on the Iraqi periphery have also been
admonished not to report exact unit troop strength figures. We've already been directed that we may not state exactly where we are. Instead, we are told to euphemistically describe this remote and very austere air base as “in the vicinity of the Iraqi border.”

Quite understandably, we're also not permitted to report where we are going—or when. Some of the other correspondents covering other squadrons in MAG-39 chafe at what they perceive to be restrictions on the “freedom of the press.” Most, however, seem to understand the rationale for the limitations. Those who find the burden of “self-censorship” too onerous can always “unvolunteer” and simply go home.

That option, of course, doesn't apply to the rest of the volunteers over here—the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, more than 200,000 of them, who are now deployed in the trackless desert along the Iraqi border. On days like this, with a vicious sandstorm blowing across the dry, flat “moonscape,” going home sounds even more attractive than usual. Life in this extreme climate and terrain prompts a longing not just for the companionship of loved ones but also for the simple pleasure of living without sand. One Marine said today, “I don't think I'll ever go to the beach again for the rest of my life.”

Two months ago, HMM-268 was at Camp Pendleton, California, without any particular plans to travel—although like all Marines in this post–September 11 environment, they were prepared for various contingencies. Then, on January 10, the word came down: “Prepare your aircraft for immediate embarkation.”

Four days later the squadron's twelve CH-46 helicopters, their blades removed, were all packed and sealed, and on January 15, the aging aircraft were lifted aboard a commercial ship in San Diego. Accompanying the birds was a detachment of a dozen Marines, led by a sergeant. “Now think of this,” said 1st Lt. Williamson. “Here's a shipment worth more than sixty million dollars being signed for by a twenty-two-year-old Marine sergeant. Where else would you get
that kind of responsibility at that age?” Where else indeed?

The rest of the Red Dragons departed from California at midnight on February 9 (for reasons still inexplicable to this old leatherneck, the U.S. Marines never go anywhere in daylight). When they arrived “in country” on February 11, the unit, officers and enlisted alike, pitched in to build tents and fill sandbags—more than twenty thousand that first week alone, according to Chief Warrant Officer Sean Wennes.

“Why so many sandbags?” asked one of the horde of media that have descended on this remote desert air base. “Because these tents don't even stop a sandstorm. They sure wouldn't stop a Scud,” replied Cpl. Phillip Sapio. “Sometimes a sandbag is all you have between us and them.” By “them,” of course, the Marine means the Iraqis—who deny even having any of the long-range weapons capable of carrying chemical or biological warheads into the heart of this desert base.

“Six hours after the helicopters arrived in port, they had been stripped of the weatherproof covers, had their rotor blades replaced, and were ready for flight,” explained Lt. Col. Driscoll. “Some people think that's extraordinary. And maybe for some organizations it would be—but for these Marines, this is what we do for a living,” he added.

Picking up and moving isn't the only thing that these Marines do for a living: they must also be prepared to fight when they
get
to where they are going. The Red Dragon helicopters have to be ready at a moment's notice to carry Marine infantrymen in a heloborne assault, resupply the units in contact, insert reconnaissance patrols deep into enemy territory, and evacuate casualties. That means their “Frogs,” or “Phrogs”—the nickname Marines gave to the twin-rotor CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters nearly forty years ago—must be constantly maintained. Right now, in the middle of a sandstorm, that's difficult at best.